“Such stuff!” grumbled Esau, angrily.
“It is quite true, Master Gordon. He always was a drowsy boy.”
“Make anybody drowsy to keep on writing lots and figures,” grumbled Esau. “Heigho—ha—hum!” he yawned. “I shan’t be very long before I go to bed.”
He kept his word, and I took a book and sat down by the little fire to read; but though I kept on turning over the pages, I did not follow the text; for I was either thinking about Mrs Dean’s needle as it darted in and out of the stuff she was sewing, or else about Mr John Dempster and our meeting that day—of how I had promised to go up and see him on Sunday, and how different he was to his cousin.
The time must have gone fast, for when the clock began to strike, it went on up to ten; and I was thinking it was impossible that it could be so late, when I happened to glance across at little Mrs Dean, whose work had dropped into her lap, and she was as fast asleep then as her son had been at the office hours before.
Chapter Three.
My New Friends.
Poor Esau and I had had a hard time at the office, for it seemed that my patient forbearing way of receiving all the fault-finding made Mr Dempster go home at night to invent unpleasant things to say, till, as I had listened, it had seemed as if my blood boiled, and a hot sensation came into my throat.